Ramblings

It has been a long weekend, made worse by excessive consumption of alcohol and continuous lack of sleep. Detox program involves a strong resolution to drink tea at bars (which I have succeeded for two days), and consume lots of fruit juice. Might start playing tennis if the weather is good. Ah, perhaps some physical exercise will rid me of my substance abuse.

My work has turned into something that Marx depicted in the Communist Manifesto. Working on one excel sheet after another, I seldom (if ever) see the result of my work, as it is handed to a project leader in another country.


A coworker from Suriname came and said hi to me today because I'm wearing my bright yellow kurta, complete with a green and yellow striped durbuta. I was embarassed as I know so little of Suriname (I thought it was off the coast of India at the beginning!) Right after she left, I went to Wiki and Worldfact to learn more about the tiny country whose restaurants are everywhere on the streets of Amsterdam.

TWo things jumped out:

Around 1600, the Dutch traded Manhattan with Britan for Suriname in the Treaty of Breda.

In 1883, the Dutc took native Surinamese to Amsterdam and placed them in human zoos for the International Colonioal and Export Exhibition.

Did I hear that igonrance and racism go hand in hand?

Looking at Dutch society today, it's hard to tell whether such racist attitudes still exist today. Personally, I haven't felt really uncomfortable yet besies being the only non-white person in clubs sometimes, and was told by both lesbians and heterosexual males that I was 'exotic', which I generally consider as an insult. Dutch universities tend to exlucde non-Dutch speaking people in career fairs, simply by holding such fairs in Dutch only. But that is not racist so much as nationalistic. There are a lot of minority groups, mostly Muslims, especially in some (more or less middle-lower class) neighborhoods. They don't seem ostracized and avoided like some inner city neighborhods in the States. School girls are allowed to wear their hejabs, and people treat this fact with respect. I have heard in the States that some minority groups tend to behave and dress in a certain way to identify themselves as a group, as they don't feel like they belong to the greater society. Dutch men wear red pants to work on casual Fridays, and women wear knee length skirts. There must be something in the air that makes people feel at east with their race, class, sexuality, and religion.

How Brazil Lost

Courtesy of Eoin Roine :)

(Sorry the words are a bit small on the blog, I can't make them any larger)

Tunak Tunak at work!

So it's a quiet afternoon at ABN AMRO and the banks' employees on my floor are bent over their work. Then suddenly, this familiar tune broke out from a corner in the room

As there are 4 AIESECers on the floor, we all gathered around the computer and started dancing... as you can imagine, the grey-haired men in business suits next to us weren't so happy. But it feels great to be have a bit of AIESEC fun when things get a bit too serious and boring! I need to teach the old men next door how to dance to Tunak Tunak :)

turning drieentwintig (not dry twig, but 23)

I woke up very early, despite being exhausted from a crazy weekend. If I'm turning a year older, every minute's suddenly more important. So I spent an hour in the morning with an old copy of the Atlantic and a latte (mmmm)in a quiet cafe near Centraal. It was early in the morning, so there were only a few stoned tourists on the streets. I waited for some philosophical revelations to hit me, since I'm older now and hopefully wiser. But as Flaming Lips have put it, the days going by are just caused by the illusion of the Earth spinning round and round. And I am no wiser because the planet spun. Perhaps some weed would've helped. So I gave up, and simply decided to spend my birthdays in a different country each year. The past four years' were spent in the US, China, India and Holland. If I keep going like this I'm going to be 200 + years old by the time I'm done. Unless Raj's projections come true and the world merges into 5 sovereign nations in the next half century. But I digress. I do, however, want to practice international law, and be thrown into a new environment every now and then to remind me what living means.

In the evening I went out with Adina and Ant (new and ex roomies), and had a fun time drinking, eating then drinking again.

I was a bit sad the whole time because Nick's surprise flowers for me was sent to the old address, and we couldn't locate it. I even asked Sandra to call him from Canada to find out where my gift is... Finally, as I was about to give up hope, it arrived in my new place on Monday...



All the wishing and hoping worked!

It's a bit late now and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I'll put more pics in the next entry :)